Scrum Master Job Postings – Why They Are Wrong!

Recently, I have seen many job postings for a Scrum Master (aka ScrumMaster) or a Product Owner role. It is nice to see these become more prominent on job posting sites. This means that, at least, Scrum is becoming more known and is part of conversations in HR departments. This is not a reflection of the quality of those conversations.

Many of these job posting are wrong!

Why?

The main reason that they are wrong (or at least difficult to ever achieve) is that many ask for someone who is both a Scrum Master and a Project Manager, someone who is both empowering and supporting as well can direct and lead a group. I find that the Scrum Master job is already hard enough without adding another list of duties from another discipline.

Why is this here? This is not the job of Scrum Master! Do you believe that it fits in the Scrum framework at all? I would expect that this level of communication to come from the Product Owner or from the team as a whole.

To set up a scorecard to track project implementation

Again, why is this present? Doesn’t this sound very much like a project manager duty?

Understand Jira Agile delivery methodology

This is a tool, not a way of doing Agile. Sounds like you get none of the benefits of either framework!

One job posting is looking for a “Senior Business Analyst/Scrum Master”

This is just awful. No matter how well an individual does this job, they will ultimately fail – nobody could do this.

There is, obviously, a huge disconnect between those that know/have experience with agile frameworks, and those that place the job postings.

What can we do to help the HR professionals, and more importantly to help those trying to get these jobs from crashing and burning? Any suggestions?

If you found a good Scrum Master or Product Owner job posting, please let me know.